


Like Pop and Ice Cream

by AnnaMcb24



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: ADHD, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Asexual Characters, Autism, F/F, F/M, Jewish Characters, LGBTQ Characters, M/M, Physical Disability, Psychosis, These/other triggers will be noted before chapters, Trans Male Character, Trigger warning: ableism, Trigger warning: child abuse, Trigger warning: rape/sexual assault/attempted sexual assault (non-graphic)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-11 02:58:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4418453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaMcb24/pseuds/AnnaMcb24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Small towns have long memories and Phil Coulson should never have come back to New Lyons.</p><p>Between Skye and her friends and enemies getting into trouble, significant recent changes in their lives and a whole host of weird, southern, small-town drama, Phil can already barely keep up. And that's, of course, when he reencounters Melinda May...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so excited to finally get to start posting this! Between research, edits and wanting to realign the fic in terms of everything that went down in the last finale, it's taken a while to get all this together. I'm excited to be finally sharing it though. I hope you all like it.
> 
> Tags, characters and ships will be added as the story progresses. Triggers will be mentioned in author's notes before the chapters. The ones listed in the tags are ones that I felt it would be best to be aware of before going into the story.

“You should wear the Hanukkah tie.”

“It's August.”

“Yeah but still.”

 

There aren't a lot of people like Victoria Hand in the world and only one in New Lyons, North Carolina. It's for the best, really. If everyone in the world were like her, she knows, the majority of people in that world would not be having fun.

She's a person who gets things done, so she's not really anyone's favorite person to be around.

She's been running Tom's Groceries for twenty years, since her father died. Everyone thought she would be a big-name CEO by now, but she's never been very interested in that sort of life. She owns four large houses by the shore that she rents in the summers to various families and, on occasion, the random, single tourist; she runs the primary local grocery store and an organic foods cafe that earns a fair amount; and she serves on the local board of education. She doesn't need fame. She's doing just fine for herself and all without once leaving the south.

That isn't meant to imply any self pity. She genuinely has never felt the urge to leave North Carolina, let alone the greater region.

She graduated from Bragg High School in 1981 with honors, graduated from North Carolina State University summa cum laude in 1986 and completed her masters at Johns Hopkins in 1988. Victoria Hand is not a woman to be trifled with, no matter what the red streaks in her hair might imply.

She also has a photographic memory. As a result, she can remember the names and faces of almost every person she's ever met.

She remembers Phillip James Coulson very well. It's not that surprising, as he was a very memorable sort of person. What is surprising is O'Grady, who's on the board of education with her, hiring him. If she's being honest, she probably wouldn't have made the same choice. But, she guesses, it's a good thing she doesn't often feel the need for honesty.

But Victoria does make an exception in her no honesty policy when she spots Melinda in the shop a couple days after O'Grady's made the hire. Victoria makes a beeline for her.

Melinda May is one of the best teachers at Bragg and one of the few people from high school Victoria hadn't lost all respect for by the time they graduated, though that might well have been because Melinda was the sort of person who kept her head down and tried to stay out of all gossip.

She's just putting some sugar snap peas in her basket when Victoria reaches her. Her hair is pulled tightly back in a ponytail and she's wearing a zip-up hoodie. Clearly not looking for interaction, but she still looks up as Victoria approaches and gives her a small nod.

“Melinda, I didn't realize you were back from your trip.”

Melinda snorts. “My mother only likes me around for so long at her new place. You know how she is. How's the summer been?”

“Fine, fine.” Victoria pauses to consider if she should go through with her intentions when she approached Melinda. It's not very fair, she supposes, but she's deeply, intensely curious and – if Victoria was to name one flaw of hers – it would have to be that she was never very good any resisting her own curiosity.

(Besides which – there was only ever one rumor she heard about Melinda May.)

“You know, we replaced Mark this summer.”

Melinda's eyebrows rise. “He must've been impressive to meet your standards.”

“Well, O'Grady's the one who found him. He actually used to live here.”

(Melinda's hand freezes by a bag of bell peppers.) “Oh?”

“Do you remember Phillip Coulson?”

She looks up at Victoria.

 

The Dairy Queen flies a St. Andrew's Cross instead of the state flag and it sits directly across the street from the English McDonald's.

They have quite a strong rivalry, much stronger than between Bragg and the neighboring high school, Something-something Jackson High School. Leo can't remember the name of it even, which says a lot about the intensity of the rivalry.

 _Is it_ Andrew _or_ Anthony _Jackson...?_

Leo Fitz has been working at the Scottish Dairy Queen since school let out last June. They've only got two Americans working there – one is Mack and he's sort of Scottish-once-removed, so that's fine – and everyone else is part of the same ex-pat community: Scottish immigrants. (It's actually a fairly large portion of New Lyons' population. Not close to a majority, but still significant, though most of them are various youths, looking for a sunny place to take a gap year.) So, they've kind of got a bias in terms of who they hire and that bias is pretty obvious.

The McDonald's across the road is largely staffed by English ex-pats and, because of that, Leo's not had a Big Mac since he and his mum moved to the United States from Glasgow. Jemma's the only English they serve and, really that's just because she's a personal friend of Leo's and he knows that she'd die without her weekly Oreo shake. So really, he's doing her a major favor. Except that his co-workers have taken to hooting when she comes in. That's not so great.

He shouldn't have told them. It was a stupid decision on his part.

It's around four and the lag in customers is going to drive him fucking crazy in a minute because all he's got to lean on is the sink and everything's already clean and Liam and Kieran are both smoking outside and Mack isn't working that day and there's literally nothing to do.

“Oy! Fitz!”

He turns as James walks over to him. Leo always feels tiny around James, because James stands at over six feet tall and weighs more than three times Leo. (Mack is also big and broad shouldered, but for some reason he doesn't make Leo feel uncomfortable.) He's got entire tattoo sleeves with all his ex-girlfriends' names and how fucking badass is that?

Meanwhile Leo is... well... he's little for his age and he's not very muscular besides. His curly hair makes his head look overly large so his shoulders look even narrower. Also his hand-eye coordination leaves a lot to be desired and, on top of being a klutz, he's got a stammer that leaves him practically incoherent sometimes. He's just generally... not a cool person.

But James hangs out with him at work, so that has to say something good for him. Or maybe it just says something bad about James.

“Yeah?” Leo asks, adjusting his cap.

“Your girl wants her shake.” James winks at him. “You should give her extra cherries. Ask if you can pop hers.”

Leo feels his cheeks burn. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he whispers and James just laughs.

“Go on, Lion Man!”

Leo tries to readjust his cap over his hair _who the fuck thought they should wear fucking baseball hats at work_ as he goes to the cash register. Jemma is standing there, her hair pulled back, the lightly freckled skin under her eyes a little puffy from lack of sleep. She straightens her back a bit as he approaches, beaming.

“Hello, Fitz!” she says.

“Hey, Jemma,” he says and sometimes his chest feels so full around her that he wants to die. “You want your usual?”

She grins, hazel eyes bright. “Obviously!”

“Of course...” He swallows and punches the order into the register. His cheeks are still on fire. “Hey, Jemma, you don't... you don't like cherries, do you?”

She gives him a quizzical look. “I'm allergic to them. I thought you knew that. Why?”

“Oh!” Relief floods his system. “Oh, good! I mean, not good, I, uh, I mean, I hate them, so. Yeah.”

“Oh...” She still looks confused as she hands him the money and he tries to busy his mind with making sure there's absolutely no drips on the sides of her cup. “Thank you,” she says when he places it in front of her. “I'll see you around later, yeah? Oh! By the way, there are new people moving in next door. Do you want to come spy?”

“Yeah! Definitely. Um, tomorrow, I think. I'm working 'til dinner.” He smiles as best he can, but his face is still on fire. “See you!”

She waves before ducking out, smile still in place.

Leo can hear James laughing towards the back. He turns around. “Oh, can you _shut up_?”

 

Skye's new room overlooks the neighbor's backyard. They have three kids who all look under the age of eight who seem to be fighting over something in the grass. Skye isn't really one for little kids. She's not patient enough and she finds it hard to imagine spending so much time with someone who can't even hold their own bladder for an extended period. These kids also are screaming like they've just been murdered.

_Can you get in trouble for throwing rocks at children?_

Her room is... well, it's close to the size of their entire old apartment. She's always sort of wondered about suburban living and so far, it seems, there are benefits. For one thing, the larger room – for _another_ , she's got her own bathroom now: an en suite with weird, blue tiles that have little ducks on them. It's also got a bath which she's mostly excited about because she's got a big collection of bath bombs given as gifts to her that have been totally wasted until now. Yeah, she read all those YA novels in high school where the heroine is all mad about leaving the city and going to the suburbs and _ugh grass ugh PTA moms ugh... fucking..._ whatever. Skye's actually pretty happy to be out of the city. Like, she likes it. She's lived in cities her whole life. A change is... Well, it's nice.

Phil is downstairs. She can hear the sound of him talking with the moving guys downstairs.

 _They have a downstairs_.

And okay, it's kind of weird that there's a big window in the bathroom, but she's already hung up a curtain and once she's got her mattress in place in her room, she's gonna use the shit out of one of those bombs.

That sounded... way more menacing than she meant it to.

One of the neighbor's kids outside screams again. She's seriously ready to strangle them and she and Phil have only been physically on the property for five hours.

She turns away from the window as Phil awkwardly drops a box by the bed frame and presses his hand to his lower back. The prosthetic sits in its usual position – relaxed but open and, as always, useless. Phil's face has gone red and contorted, emphasizing the way his nose sits kind of diagonal and making his lips look even thinner than usual.

“You okay?” she asks, turning away from the window. The box he was holding is labeled “GAY PORN” which means it's video games, DVDs and that box of weird finger-inserting tampons that she has literally never opened.

She has a system.

“I really wish you could've refrained from exposing the movers to your... particular sense of humor,” he says, narrowing his eyes at her. She grins and leans with mock pretension on the windowsill.

“I'm just being honest, daddy-o,” she says. “You sure you don't want help?”

“No, just... unpack,” he says, waving one hand weakly. He turns to go and she launches herself over the bed frame to stop him.

“You've messed up your back,” she says, neatly sliding into place to block the doorway. That's only part of the reason, but it seems pretty dickish to go _you kind of suck at carrying things now_ , right? “Sit down for a bit. Besides, this wallpaper's making me sick.”

Phil smiles ruefully. “Sounds like one of you will have to go.”

Skye rolls her eyes and steps into the hallway. “You're the worst.”

 

They used to live in South Philly, about three blocks from the high school in a cramped apartment. Skye's room was nine feet by ten with a fantastic view of an alley behind a Taco Bell. Her walls were originally a weird sort of salmon color, but the amount of smudges from past occupants (as well as herself) had turned it into dusty pink. Clothes were constantly scattered over the floor because she's never been a very tidy person and also she didn't have an actual closet and it was hard to get everything into her chest of drawers. There was also a weird card table that had originally been bought as a desk substitute but then she never bothered to replace it so it just stayed there, tucked in by the window.

Phil's room was seven feet by eight and included a twin bed, a desk and a set of shelves. His suits hung on the back of the door, dusted with peeling paint. She was allowed in his room, but she wasn't often in there. It was a little too cramped, especially with Phil's crates of comic books stacked up along one wall, which make the room even narrower than it is. A couple times though, especially when she was smaller and she would have nightmares about everything that had happened, he would pick her up from her bed and carry her back into his room. Even then, the twin bed was too narrow for them both, so he'd lie on his back and hold her in place on top of him, like a baby koala.

The kitchen was about the size of a walk-in closet, which, honestly, was not really an issue until two people tried to get in there at the same time. Then it was a major problem. In fact, she was pretty sure she and Phil hadn't cooked together in that kitchen since the last time she slept in his bed, when she was small enough to be about half her current size, and even then it was cramped.

She didn't complain, though – at the beginning because she was terrified of him sending her back to the group home and, later, because she'd kind of grown sentimental about the place. Like, she knew they would move eventually, but before the accident happened, she had been fairly sure that wasn't going to happen until Phil retired. He had a couple savings accounts, she knew, and tended toward stingy because he found saving more comfortable. Not moving became a bit of a non-issue, because she's pretty sure that, despite having the salary of a standard public school teacher, Phil was going to be one of those mysteriously wealthy people by the time he got to his old age and she was fine with hearing drunk college students screaming with laughter outside her window if it meant she got to help him spend it.

And then the accident happened and a lot of things changed after, including the addition of a lot of disposable money from the settlement.

Of course he'd tried to be very careful, in his own way, about presenting the idea to her – first casually mentioning it during one of their dinner-and-a-movie nights. His hair was a little mussed and his collar was open as he carefully pushed some of the mushy peas from the TV dinner on to his fork. (He'd not worn a tie that day. It was the first time she'd seen him go to work without one since... ever.) His phone sat silent and dark on the armrest beside him. The mystery lady wasn't texting anymore. Skye wasn't sure if they'd been dating or not, but Phil had stopped smiling at his phone and it had stopped lighting up with texts from “Audrey” anymore.

She's, like, ninety percent sure that's why they moved, but she's not sure. (Ten percent range of uncertainty because the more she thinks about it the more she thinks they moved because of his hand.) And she's never going to ask because she knows how Phil is about relationships.

Meaning: he doesn't really do them. Ever. And he _definitely_ doesn't talk about them.

“You know,” he said, with literally no tact or subtlety, “my old high school down in North Carolina has been looking for teachers.”

She looked at him, which didn't sound impressive by itself but they had been watching _Space Jam_ , so... “Okay?”

He shrugged and she felt acutely aware of the fact that his eyebrows were just a bit too high for the situation to be properly casual. “I just got an email about it. Thought I'd bring it up.”

Obviously his best attempts at careful didn't go so well, but then everything with her then-boyfriend Mike imploded (a long story) and, yeah.

(Actually, no – he helped this annoying girl Lorelei cheat on an exam for some petty cash and then _fucking slept with her_ while he and Skye were _still dating_. Things collapsed pretty quickly after that and finally ended completely when he framed _Skye_ for helping Lorelei cheat and she _might_ have punched him in the nuts. Her memory of the incident is still a bit hazy. She'd gotten a bit frenzied and it made it hard to remember things properly.)

Basically, three months after their initial conversation, when Phil told her he'd taken the open position in North Carolina, she was pretty much okay with it.

 

By ten that first night in New Lyons, Phil is finishing the living room, because he's stubborn and she knows that when he gets like this, he's just going to get more stubborn so she bowed out. The kitchen is... kind of done. Phil's room has a bed so far, but she's not involved in that. Then they also have, like, four other spaces to figure out what to do with. There's been promises of pizza and Phil has said that they're going to split a beer and she's so game for this. She just needs the pizza to get there.

And since the doorbell is ringing that means—

“Skye! Can you get that?” Phil calls. He's obviously out of breath and if he's fucked up his arm as well as his back during this process, she's going to be so smug.

“Yeah!” she yells back and rushes to the stairs.

 

So there are regular pizza guys and then there are _hot_ pizza guys and of course Skye is sticky from perspiration and wearing her oldest, rattiest clothes and her face is all shiny and sweaty because they' haven't gotten the air conditioning to work yet is when it's a _hot_ pizza guy.

His dark hair tufts out from under his red baseball cap and brushes perfectly across his forehead. It's the kind of hair that would make a boy band jealous – except he's a bit too sunburnt across his nose and cheekbones to be in a boy band. Somehow, though, the burn just serves to highlight how sharply cut the bones of his face are. Pointy, like he's just a little bit underweight, but his arms are exposed and they make it pretty clear that that fat wasn't lost from under-eating. He's probably ripped under that red t-shirt.

He smiles at her and Skye tries to smile back, but she's not sure how it turns out because _why does he have that face_.

“You're not Phil, I'm guessing,” Hot pizza guy says and his teeth are so perfect and white, Skye feels sort of like she's just been smacked across the face. His eyes are brown like crisp autumn leaves, like the color of cinnamon as it melts over apple pie. His jaw juts out like a fucking... something. (Her brain might short-circuiting.) His shoulders are a little too broad for his shirt, which only barely skims his horrifically narrow torso. Okay, not horrifically. More like... panty... melting.

She's going to die right now.

Hot pizza guy's smile starts to fade and Skye realizes she's just been staring at him for a long-ass time without saying anything.

“Phil!” she says a little too loudly. Hot pizza guy raises his eyebrows.

 _His eyes are too fucking gorgeous. Emergency services are required_.

She laughs awkwardly and is very, _very_ grateful for the fact that she doesn't blush like Phil does. “I'm not Phil. I'm Skye. Skye Coulson.” She starts to put out her hand and then thinks better of it.

Hot pizza guy smiles, his eyes light up with amusement. Well, at least she can make him laugh if nothing else. “Grant Ward.”

“Grant. That's a nice name. I'm Phil's daughter. I'll take those,” she says, taking the pizzas from his hands and reaches into her back pocket. “How much is it?” She's got two crumpled tens. That's not enough.

“Your dad paid with a card over the phone,” he says. His smile implies a lot pity and held-back laughter, but his lips are so pretty she wants to die.

“Well! There's your tip!” she says and accidentally slaps both tens into his hand. “Thanks so much!”

His eyes widen. “Are you serious?”

“Yes!” she sings because she wants to bury herself under ten tons of concrete. “Bye! Thank you! Bye!”

She slams the door and sees Phil standing in the doorway to the living room.

“Are you okay?” he asks and she can hear the laughter in his voice.

“Oh shut up.”

 

The house is pale yellow with white shutters. The paint isn't as fresh as it probably was in the past; it's chipped and cracked from the sharp winds coming off the Atlantic Ocean, the grain of the wood visible beneath. A dead hornet’s nest hangs from the roof over the deck. The garden bears signs of neglect – tall weeds and dried out flowers – and Skye has been tasked with mowing the lawn tomorrow. A battered fence surrounds the lawn, bleached from salt and sun. The front deck is slightly elevated and the steps leading up are worn enough that the wood looks almost like velvet.

It's about a five minute walk from the beach. The shore is visible from Phil's window.

Skye's room is covered with blue and turquoise wallpaper that looks like an abstract representation of a Destiny's Child video, which leads her to believe that it was originally a kid's room. That and the little oil marks on the ceiling from sticky-tack, marking where there were probably once glow-in-the-dark constellations. She's going to use thumbtacks tomorrow to hang her Christmas tree lights around the top of the room, because she's not really big on glow-in-the-dark shit, but she's definitely one for Christmas tree lights. She also needs to finish hanging up her clothes (in her _real life closet_ ), but whatever. Lights come first.

She lies in her bed, surrounded by boxes and listens to the sound of a dog barking a couple houses down. It's quiet here in a good way. Quiet like a pair of noise-canceling headphones.

A door slams outside.

Skye sits up and finds herself stumbling over to look out the window. A slim brunette has just stepped out of the house next door to sit on the back porch. The only light is alive with insects, but the girl seems unperturbed as she pulls out a book and begins to read.

Skye picks up her phone on the desk where it's charging. _1:14 AM_. Okay...

The girl's hair has been pulled back in a loose braid, leaving her to repeatedly tuck a strand or two back behind her ears. Her skin looks pale and jaundiced in the yellow light as she slouches against the railing.

So... The neighbors have... four kids now: three very small boys and a teenage vampire. Skye's no expert on family dynamics, but that sort of situation seems to _scream_ re-marriage.

 _Awkward_...

Skye watches the girl a few minutes longer and then turns to go back to bed.

 

There's a house about a block from the shore – painted turquoise with cream-colored shutters. The roof was once black but now it's faded by the sun, the fate of everything near the ocean. It's surrounded by a white fence, freshly painted at the beginning of each summer, and outlined in a slate path.

The front of the house is almost obscured from view by overgrown plant life. Ivy climbs the front walls and morning glories open each day as the sun rises. Along the path, carrots grow, sweet and moist, in the sand. Brilliant red strawberries hang from their pot. A rose bush sits to the left of the house – white Akito roses shining like silk in the sun.

Behind the house is a patio, hidden from outsiders by a line of hedges. In the driveway sits a sky blue Ford Thunderbird from 1966 in perfect working condition.

Years ago, the hedges were shorter and less managed and the front door was covered in cream-colored lead paint. It's now brick red and there’s a grizzle and tan Saluki milling about somewhere inside the house, intermittently curling up on the carpet and pacing, waiting for her mistress to wake up.

These are the only changes.

 

Skye yawns and stretches, spoon still in hand. The half-eaten bowl of Rice Krispies in front of her has slowly turned to sugary mush, which is good because that's her favorite kind of mush. Phil is across from her with a half-eaten bagel sitting on his plate as he looks at his tablet, the screen of which reflects in his glasses.

“You know, you should wear your glasses more often,” she declares, digging another spoonful from her sugar-mush.

Phil raises one eyebrow. “And why is that, Skye?”

“Because... You look like old man Clark Kent in them.”

“Wow.”

“I mean that in a good way.”

Phil scoffs and shakes his head. “I'll take your word for it.” He takes a bite of his bagel and then points a stern finger at her, still holding the rest of the bagel in his hand. “And I'm not old.”

She scrunches up her nose. “You're kinda old.”

“You're grounded.”

She laughs and puts the mushy cereal and sugar in her mouth. “Sure I am. You'll never be able to ground me. I'm too smart for my own good, remember?”

“Oh!” Phil sighs, but she can see he's still smiling, “believe me. I remember.”

The doorbell rings. They stare at each other for a moment.

“Did you...?” she starts. He shakes his head. “It's morning. Who's even up right now in the summer?”

“It's actually eleven and we're both lazy, Skye.” He sighs and gets up from his chair. (They assembled the kitchen chairs that morning. They'd been too distracted to do it that night before, even though the furniture had arrived from the store's stockroom at the same time as Phil and Skye had in New Lyons.) Skye gets up slowly to follow. Her footsteps are muffled on the wood floor by her socks while Phil's are bare and make quiet slapping sounds with each step as he advances toward the front door.

He's not wearing his prosthetic, meaning that his left arm just ends abruptly a couple inches below his elbow. She hadn't noticed that he wasn't wearing it before and she feels... not guilty. It's more surprise, because everything about it had been so shocking before and within the space of less than six months, it's become normal. Like, that's weird isn't it?

Outside the front door are the neighbors Skye had spotted yesterday: two adults that Skye has to assume are the parents, the three little boys and the teenage vampire. There's also a boy with them who Skye is pretty sure can't possibly be related to them because the family that lives next door apparently all look like they could play elves in _Lord of the Rings_ (including the teenage vampire, which is annoying because Skye had sort of hoped she would look like a vampire from _Buffy_ ) and the other boy looks sort of like a children's book drawing of an imp or some other kind of trickster-y fairy.

They all seem to be dressed to the nines, which sucks because Phil is just standing there in his baggy Penn State t-shirt and his half-disintegrated-they're-so-old pajama pants and half an arm and Skye is just wearing an old My Chemical Romance shirt and some boxers she bought at Old Navy, like, three Christmases ago.

They've got little cats on them.

“Hello!” says the woman, smiling so broadly that Skye is sort of worried her cheeks are going to tear. Her gaze is fiercely fixed on Phil's face and Skye has to give her credit because that is some intense eye contact. Phil winces visibly. “Welcome to New Lyons! I'm Liana Rosen-Simmons and this is my husband, Elia. We just thought we'd pop by and welcome you to the neighborhood.”

Skye has to give Phil so much credit for the fact that he's actually not screaming at this woman. She shuffles closer, in the hopes of having a better view if Phil slaps someone. Which is super unlikely. Still.

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Liana. I'm Phil. This is my daughter, Skye.” He puts his right arm around her shoulders. His gaze, she notes, is pretty consistent and still held on the woman's face, albeit on the lower half. “I'm sorry we both look like such slobs. We had a late night last night.”

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Phil.” Liana Rosen-Simmons has an English accent and smiles so easily and brightly that Skye can't quite imagine her expressing rage. She imagines that it would just be like furious grinning. “And Skye – what a beautiful name!” She puts out her hand for her to shake.

“Hi,” Skye says, hunching her shoulders a little because that _crisp_ morning breeze is making her... um... _visibly cold_. “It's nice to meet you.”

“This is Eugene, Jack and David, our sons,” she says, gesturing to them as she speaks, “and this is my beautiful step-daughter, Jemma.” _Nailed it!_

Teenage vampire shies away a little from her step-mom's hand and smiles awkwardly at Skye. “Hi.”

Well, if she can't have _Buffy_ -looking vampires, at least this one's English... like Spike.

Okay. Get away from the _Buffy_ angle.

“... And this here is Jemma's dear friend, Leo Fitz. He just happened to drop in this morning.”

The imp-looking boy gives Skye a little wave, but doesn't say anything.

“Mum, he doesn't have a hand,” the littlest of the boys says in the loudest whisper Skye's ever heard.

“David - !” Liana says, her cheeks reddening.

“It's fine,” Phil says, shaking his head. Skye almost wants to nudge him and ask _are you okay or are you not?_ But now he's pointing between the two teens. “Are you both students at Bragg?” He looks so sincere and Skye can see _exactly_ what he's getting at.

“Phil—” she starts. He looks at her, questioning, but then gives her a nod, indicating his understanding.

“Yes, they'll both be there this autumn. Well, Leo started there last year,” Liana explains, beaming and still flushed, but seemingly delighted at having been asked a question, “but since we only just came here last January, this will be Jemma's first year. We used to come here for holidays every summer and when Elia was offered an early retirement, we just... jumped at the chance!” She grins and looks at her husband, who seems to have spaced out sometime earlier in the conversation.

“Yes...” he says, slowly after Liana jabs him in the ribs. Skye tries to suppress a snort.

“Huh.” Phil nods awkwardly and Skye can almost see the cogs turning in his brain, trying to work out a way to end this conversation. “I'm sure Jemma and Skye will see each other this fall. Skye's going to be starting at Bragg this year too. Her sophomore year.”

“Oh good! That's the same as these two!” Liana cries, beaming again. “Well, we just wanted to drop by and say hello, welcome you and all. We'll be cooking some quasi-American barbeque tonight if you'd like to pop over. We love having company.”

“We'll definitely consider it,” Phil says, smiling back as best he can. He slips his arm back down from around Skye's shoulder's so as to push his glasses up his nose. “It depends how much we get done on the house—”

“Don't hesitate to borrow these two.” Liana gives Jemma the Teenage Vampire a squeeze and taps imp-boy-whose-name-Skye-can't-remember on the shoulder. Weirdly, neither of them groans, which makes Skye start to suspect a bit of a Stepford situation. “I'm sure they're bored stiff with watching the boys. Just let me know.”

“Absolutely. I – thank you so much for dropping by and I'll let you know if we need any help.” Phil laughs awkwardly and Skye sees her cue to step in.

“We're not trying to be rude, just leaving you on the doorstep. We just haven't put together all the living room yet,” she explains, trying to smile. “Maybe we'll see you later?”

“Of course.” Liana grins. “We'll see you around. Come on, boys, Jemma.” The group of them head off down the path, Liana herding them like a sheepdog, and Skye pushes the door closed as quickly as possible.

Phil's still just staring at the place where Liana had been standing, his brow furrowed, his mouth half-open. He looks vaguely distraught.

“You okay?”

“How is her husband retired? He has to be at least five years younger than I am...”

Skye shakes her head. “I don't even know what just happened,” she says and walks back toward the kitchen. She's got two spoonfuls left of sugar-mush that she does not intend to waste.

 

They don't go to the barbeque that evening, though Phil makes Skye go over and express their “sincerest apologies”, then though Skye told him that sounded like some lame sorry-about-your-dead-uncle Hallmark card. Jemma is the one who opens the door, her hair frizzy and tangled. Her cheeks are slightly flushed and her eyes are a little over-bright, but she smiles at Skye, looking like an awful lot like her step-mom.

“Oh, that's alright,” she says when Skye explains that she and Phil haven't got enough done yet to take a break, but they appreciate the invitation blah blah blah. “It's not... Mum's just excited about new people in the neighborhood. She'll be fine.” She smiles. Skye suddenly notices that Jemma has an awful lot of freckles, covering every inch of her skin, still starkly present under the blush of her cheeks.

“Well, we're really grateful. And Phil says we'll definitely all be doing dinner together some time.”

Jemma opens her mouth as though to ask a question and then seems to think better of it.

“I'll tell mum. Do let me and Fitz know if you need any help.” She hesitates, looking almost nervous. “Do you, um, do you want my phone number? In case you need anything?”

“Oh. Um. Sure, I guess.” Skye opens up a new contact page on her phone and hands it to Jemma, whose fingers tremble as she enters her information. “Thanks.”

“It's no trouble. Have a good night.”

And the door is shut.

 

Phil gives Skye a look, his expression pinched, and leans towards her as he speaks. “I can't wear the Hanukkah tie to my training session, Skye, even though it was given to me by my _lovely_ , _beautiful_ , _hand-picked_ daughter.” He bumps his nose against hers, then moves back from where she's sitting on his bed and selects his boring red tie.

He has four ties: the boring red tie, the boring blue tie, the boring black tie and the Hanukkah tie, which Skye bought him and it lights up and is just generally the best of them.

“You look like you could work at the DMV,” Skye says, flopping back on the bed. One of her hands hits the wall on her way down and she suppresses a wince. That's going to bruise. “They'll forget your name within ten seconds of meeting you.”

“I guess it's good I'm not in this for the rest of the staff.”

“Oh!” She throws up her hands toward the ceiling. Phil's already attached his favorite lampshade to the fixture, the one with the little _Captain America_ shields around it. “Such a noble teacher! Oh captain, my captain! Oh, _To Sir with Love_! What a great man! He changed my life!”

“Skye,” Phil says, calmly, draping the tie around his collar. His room is horrifically under-decorated and, if their apartment was anything to go by, it's probably going to stay that way. (She had to help him carry up crates of comic books yesterday afternoon and she really just wants him to learn how to use a bookshelf.) “Maybe calm down a little. Also, tie this, please.”

“Okay, but if any shit goes down, you have to tell me. We're in your old hometown. Some of these bitches are _guaranteed_ to recognize you and I need you to be able to quote that bullshit back to me.”

“Stop cursing. Also, I mean, I was very different then. I doubt they'll even remember me.” He takes his jacket down from the hanger and slides into it easily. “I don't really look like a DMV worker, right?”

Skye slides off the bed and stands in front of him to look at his outfit before she ties his tie. Black suit, white shirt, red tie, black shoes. His hair is brushed back with pomade and it only serves to emphasize his receding hairline. The only part of the outfit that bears mentioning is that the suit has a very pale pinstripe, which makes it unique from his two fully black suits.

“You look great,” she lies as she tightens the knot. She shifts a little to the side so she can see his reflection in the mirror and leans her head against his shoulder. Always the same Phil, day in and day out. “You're gonna do so, so well. You're gonna knock their f-f – their _frickin'_ socks off. And I'll be texting you, like, the whole time, okay? So you're gonna be great.” She moves around to his front, wraps her arms around him (one arm over one shoulder and one arm below his armpit) and rests her head against his chest. His shoulders shake with silent laughter as he returns her hug.

(She has to hug him a certain way. He was very careful about it when he first brought her home, sitting her down on the sofa and explaining that she couldn't always touch him the way that might seem normal. That sometimes he might get upset about being hugged in ways he didn't like. It didn't mean she had done anything bad. He was just _sensitive_. _Sensitive_ was always the word he used at that point. _Sensitive_.)

“You're ridiculous,” he says and lifts her to stand on the toes of his shoes. “My hand-picked baby.”

She shuts her eyes and listens to the air passing through his chest. “Damn right,” she whispers and he laughs softly before pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

 

Phil bought a broken down, jalopy of a '62 Corvette the summer before he could leave for university with over a year's worth of saved allowances and pay checks. Rabbi White let him hide it at his house and by the time it was September, he'd replaced the entire engine block, the tires and the interior chairs. Okay, by September, he'd basically replaced all but the overall body of the car. She'd been given a fresh coat of red paint, new mirrors and a name: Lola.

And the exact day he was allowed to move into the dorms, he'd carried out the three boxes that comprised his entire life's possessions and left New Lyons.

He hasn't contacted his foster parents since.

 

Bragg High School hasn't changed since the day he graduated. It's still all squared corners and red brickwork and identical windows on every floor – except for a sign out front, which didn't used to be there at all. Seeing it, the huge, flat face of some of the worst years of his life makes him feel like his heart's fallen into his stomach. He pulls into the parking lot, taking a space furthest from the doors. (For luck, he thinks, and maybe because he doesn't want Nick Fury to see him and a vehicle anywhere near the front doors.) He rubs his face with his hand and leans his forehead against the steering wheel, fidgeting with the bottom of his tie as he tries to remember how to breathe, very much aware of the weight of his prosthetic against his thigh because it's not the same weight as his actual arm and it _drives him crazy_.

And the more he tries to breathe, the more he can only think how this whole thing was a stupid idea.

There were other places he could've gone, tons of them. A seemingly random email from Nick Fury should not have been enough to drag him back to this town. There were other places. He could've moved west, except he can't stand landlocked states. He just needed to leave Philadelphia. He didn't even need to leave the fucking state... He doesn't owe Nick that much.

Well, okay, he owes him a lot, but he could've ignored that. But it all has to work out anyway. It has to work out – for Skye.

He leans back and rubs his eyes. His reflection in the rear view mirror looks sort of like a crumpled bag: sad and old.

A flash passes through his peripheral vision and, as he looks in the mirror, a sky blue Thunderbird pulls into a space diagonally behind him.

_It's not..._

A woman steps out of the car, balancing perfectly in her heeled boots as she hip chucks the door shut. The lines of her legs are accentuated by a pair of close-cut black slacks and her narrow torso is shown off with a loose-fitting jersey top. It hangs easily from her straight shoulders like a chiton, the lines only interrupted by the large black purse that's slung over her shoulder.

Straight, perfectly coiffed black hair that falls to just above her shoulder blades. She's wearing sunglasses, but the set of her jaw, her posture...

His heart feels like it could burst because there's no one else – because he'd recognize her and that car anywhere. They could be hundreds of feet under water, in the middle of the Arctic. He knows that car like the back of his hand, like how he knows exactly where Melinda's birthmarks are along her arms – like how he could see her on the other side of Times Square and know instantly that it was her just by the way she works her legs.

For a second, he thinks she's going to look at him. He's sure of it. He's sure that her eyes will be drawn to him like they were that first day – the way every molecule in his body seems to be magnetically pulled towards her.

But she walks out of the view of the mirror and he turns to watch her as she moves toward the front of the school, her hair shining perfectly in the morning sunshine, shirt rippling in the breeze.

His throat feels like it's just been coated in wax. His contacts suddenly feel too dry against his eyes.

He looks at his own reflection briefly and opens his door.

 

_“The Romantic poets were interested in exploring the concepts of nature and the impact of the natural world on a man's internal life. They brought into vogue the discussion of wildlife and the woods in poetry and fiction. They also were interested in the new ideas of psychology and childhood as a reflection of...”_

_Phillip drums the side of his head with the palm of his hand. Andy's sitting four rows in front of him, near the front, sketching in the margins of his notes. John is sitting three rows over, near the middle of the room, whispering to one of the other guys on the football team. Marilyn is jiggling her leg and tapping a pencil against her desk on the opposite corner of the room. A dark haired girl two rows ahead of him is chewing gum. He can't remember her name. He's never had a class with her before. She's smart, but she snaps her gum every couple of minutes and it feels like his head is being driven into a wall every time she does it. The teacher hasn't even told her to spit it out. Maybe she's just that smart._

_The scraping of desks. People are getting into pairs. He doesn't move. People are talking over each other and he drums harder on the side of his head. The sound is drilling into his skull. He can feel his glasses slipping down his nose from sweat. Bile rises in his throat._

_“Hey. Are you okay?”_

_The gum-chewing girl has turned her desk around so hers is facing his. He chokes and fumbles, pulling a paperclip from the chain in his pocket. She's pretty. He nods so she doesn't ask him twice and she pulls out a book from her backpack and flips through it_

_“So, I think we're supposed to look at this poem,” she says. She's Asian and now he knows who she is because he's heard people talk about her (there aren't a lot of Asians in New Lyons) – Andy specifically. But Andy's usually wrong about everyone._

_He blinks and bends the paperclip out of its shape._

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart...

_“I have no idea what this has to do with what she just said,” the girl mutters, frowning. “Also, Milton was a terrible person. Who cares what he would think?”_

_“I – ” Phillip starts and stops, shutting his eyes. The room is too loud. Too many noises. Marilyn is still tapping her pencil. The girl doesn't say anything but he can feel a hand on his head_ hurry up hurry up _. “I think it's about nature. That's... that's...”_

_He stops talking because his words are getting jumbled again, but she nods, her hair swinging as she does, and he glances at her. Her gold hoop earrings catch the light from the window. “Yeah, that's what Mrs. Chisholm said we were supposed to look for, but I don't...” She sighs through her nose. Her lips are pressed together in a fine line, her thin brows furrowed. She's probably impatient, annoyed. He's annoying to work with. He's stupid – too stupid to talk properly or listen properly._

_Her shirt gaps around the collar and he can see a sliver of pink lace._

_He snaps the paperclip._

_“Ah – ” He drops the pieces and pushes his glasses up his nose. His cheeks are burning. He drums the side of his head._

_“Hey.” Her tone is sharp, but gentle. He blinks. Normally when he_ throws a fit _, people don't use that voice. The only person who's done that voice is Rabbi White when Phillip gets too loud during services. He blinks again. The girl puts a hand on his desk. He looks at it. Her nails are short – chipped nail polish. Her knuckles have bruises on them like she's been in a fight. He didn't know that girls got in fights. “Are you okay?”_

_He swallows and nods. “Yeah. I'm – I'm. Yeah.”_

_“Good,” she says and moves her hand to touch his arm. He shifts back, his chair colliding with the rear wall. He can feel acid rise in his throat, searing his esophagus. Her hands fly back. “Sorry! I'm – um – I'm sorry. Are you okay?”_

_“Yeah,” he says and fumbles for another paperclip._

_She nods and turns the book toward him. “Maybe, um, maybe we could talk about this part?” She outlines a block of text with her pencil._

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free...

_“The sea...” he swallows and breathes. The paperclip snaps. He drums the side of his head._

_The girl waits. Her gaze is even. When he's got another paperclip, she speaks. “'The sea'... what?” she says, encouragingly._

_His breath hitches for a moment. “The sea's, um. The sea's nature,” he gets out, eventually. It's lame. There's more than that, but the words aren't there and he can't..._

_“Yeah,” she says and smiles. “So, I guess he's saying this guy is like the sea, right?” He nods. She leans back in her seat. “Well, that's all Chisholm's getting from me. Fuck this class.” She stretches her gum over her tongue. “First day back to school. I hate this.”_

_He nods and steals a look at her face. She's staring out the window, her jaw held high. “Yeah. I – I don't like... Yeah. I don't... school...”_

_“I can't wait to graduate.” She sighs and looks at him. Her lips twitch at the corners. “Though working with you is nice. What's your name anyway?”_

_“Ph – Phillip, um, Phillip Coulson.”_

_“I'm Melinda May,” she says. She extends a hand. “It's nice to meet you.”_

_Her hand is still there and Phillip has to look away from it. His eyes are burning._

_“I'm glad to – I'm glad to meet you too,” he stammers and bites his tongue until his mouth is filled with the taste of iron._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be warned for some moments of internalised ableism! There are some things said in passing within the characters' different portions that are ableist, but this is meant more to do with their own internalised issues than with what is factually true. I hope no offence is caused.
> 
> Also there is a scene talking about threatened sexual assault and sexual harassment of a minor (by another minor but still).

Leo's fingers tremble slightly as he twists a screw into place over the copper wire (he'd prefer gold, but wouldn't everyone?). His fingertips are nearly numb now. His skin never seems to callous enough for this to stop hurting.

He needs his soldering gun back. He's bored stiff. You burn off part of one set of ugly curtains and suddenly it's like you're the fucking anti-Christ. (Not that he knows much about Christ, anti- or otherwise, outside the few times he's been dragged to church by his stepmum or the _Omen_ movies.) He's had to put his fully-wired model of the USS Enterprise on hold because his mum's hid it and he's not about waste time looking for something that by all rights should be sat in his hands right now.

So he's rewiring all the plugs in his room, just to keep from dying.

Keeping one finger pressed over the screw, he takes the Phillips-head from his mouth and gently twists it into place.

His phone chirps – the sound of the communicators from _Star Trek: the Original Series_ – signaling a text message. He lays the lamp's cord down on his bed and looks at his phone, smiling despite himself when he sees the sender.

 **Jemma** _can see new girl from my window and she's dancing on top of a chair???? v weird._

He smiles and unlocks the screen.

 _Idk. Sounds like you a bit lol_.

He's about to put the phone down again when it chirps again. She's sent him a frowning emoji. He smiles again.

“Leo!”

Sighing, he climbs down from the bed. The mattress is elevated above his desk and only serves to make his room darker, but he likes it dark so that's okay. He makes his way out into the hall. Leaning on the banister, he can see his mum ascending from the basement, where her office is.

“Yeah, mum?”

She looks up at him, her delicate, papery skin creasing as she smiles. “What're you doing, hiding up there?”

He shrugs. “Just working. What is it?”

“I'm just thinking about lunch, edele. What do you want?”

“Not a burger. I've had too many this summer.”

She laughs, brushing some of her graying hair from her face, and turns to collect her keys from the bowl by the door. “Worried about getting fat or something? Jemma might not be so interested then, eh?”

His cheeks burn and he squeezes the banister in frustration. “Mum – ”

See, the issue is that Leo has, like, three or four friends in any case and maybe, like, ten Facebook friends and three of his four real life friends are girls and his mum seems to have this weird idea that all of them want to date him, which is ridiculous because most people can barely stand to be in his presence and he's pretty sure no girl at his high school is looking for a short, skinny tech geek with autism. Her suspicions are especially centered around Jemma, who Leo's been best friends with since they were seven. She was even suspicious when he was a kid. Like, who is even thinking about crushes as a nine year old? He could barely piss without fucking up his aim at that point – who even had time for girls?

Or boys?

And yeah he's got an accent, but that sort of loses impact after a while. (Though it did land him his first kiss – with Ariella Golding no less _and_ it was with tongue. But then she'd sort of lightly touched his hair and he'd sort of pitched a fit because if his hair is going to be touched, it's got to be properly touched, not just sort of brushed and his hairline felt like it was covered with fire ants or something and it had all just gone kind of poorly after that.) He's been living in New Lyons for seven years. These things become sort of background noise after a while. And his accent is milder than it used to be, but he can't seem to shake it entirely because of his mum and the horrible weekly phone calls with his dad. And there's also everyone at work besides.

James says he's going to be banging tons of girls once he goes to university, but considering that Fitz's first kiss happened when he was twelve and that he's sixteen now and that there's been almost no action in between, it seems pretty fucking unlikely.

It's not even like Leo doesn't want to have sex – he really, _really_ wants to – but he also knows how picky he is just with people brushing up against him in the hall between classes and he's nervous that if it were the wrong person, if it were someone he didn't know really well, that it would be just a repeat of the whole Ariella Golding kiss: great at first and then suddenly very, very unpleasant.

“You're a handsome boy, Leo!” his mum calls as she heads to the door. “You'd better remember it or those girls will be taking advantage.”

He presses his face to his hands. “Bye, mum!” The front door clicks shut and he sighs before going back to his room. He's painted the walls dark blue and the trim is all white. (“Navy-themed,” his mum had said.) They're hung with posters and notes to himself. He's got a special shelf on his bookcase for his models that are still drying and a special area of his desk that's just for painting. Most of the light comes from the window, but it's largely blocked out by the pale blue cotton drapes his mum sewed from an old sheet after he burned the last ones. It's not too dark though. He's got a lamp clipped to the railing besides the one he's currently working on. He just doesn't like, like, sunlight.

He climbs back up to his bed, narrowly missing the cord for his laptop as he heads up. He's going to take apart his computer next. It's not running as well as it could and then maybe he'll play _Skyrim_ or hang out with Jemma.

It's his day off, after all.

There's a text on his phone when he sits down, his head brushing the ceiling.

 **Jemma** _thinking of talking to the neighbour???? my brothers are about to drive me fucking insane. do you want to join me??_

He smiles again and bites his lip. _Yeah. When?_

 

Skye bops her head in time to the music and stacks plates in the kitchen cupboards. The mugs lined up on a shelf: boring/guest ones at the back and silly, personal ones to the front. In the past two days they've managed to get about sixty percent of their stuff out of cardboard boxes which means that about six rooms have been at least partially decorated, but there are still two spare rooms on the second floor plus the third bathroom (she's occupying one and Phil's snatched the other one which is, of course, about as big as a beach cabin), the entire fucking attic area that neither of them have any idea what to do with and a big room on the ground floor plus a bathroom.

There's also a basement that they've not even discussed.

She's guessing they'll decorate them over time. Moving cost a lot, even with the settlement money. Phil tries to live as cheaply as possible, but it'll be done eventually. She's kind of excited for it, but also nervous because if Phil has his way, their decorations are going to be mostly beige and she's not up for living in some sort of neutral-colored house of horrors. She may not be an artist, but she does have, like, sensibilities.

And, okay, Phil has sensibilities too, but they're all weird. She's been living with him since she was seven – has known him since she was six. She knows all his strange decorating tendencies.

She doesn’t remember much about living with her parents. She has some photographs of them when they were younger: their wedding picture, a picture of her mother holding her, a photo of the two of them when her mother is pregnant and her father’s eyes are still clear and blue.

Her only real memories of her mother are fragments of golden-brown hair, hummed lullabies and a long, straight nose. There are others besides, but they're strange – constructed more from photographs she's seen than any actual recollections.

She has more memories of her father than she really wants.

But mostly Skye remembers the Poots’ house, which was really technically a group home. It was Skye, three other girls and two boys, one of whom hated her guts. And, yeah, she understood that you had to be at a certain level of fucked up to get placed in a group home at all, but it was just because she had and has ADHD and had trouble focusing when she didn’t give a shit. Like in day care. And kindergarten.

And she might have stepped on a boy’s hand and she doesn’t really remember _why_ she did it, but he totally deserved it.

But _Nate_ – Nate was on a completely different level from her. Twelve years old when she first moved in and already big for his age, he used to threaten to pull off her fingernails and stick scissors in her vagina while she slept. He knocked out her tooth on her sixth birthday because she took too long opening her present (a ballerina Barbie doll that Skye ended up losing at some point).

A lot of her time was spent hiding from Nate because she wasn’t regularly in day care or kindergarten and she was suspended for part of first grade and he was just always _there_ , ready to jump out at her and lick the taut skin between his index finger and his middle.

Her favorite place to hide from him was the wardrobe in the girls’ room, but Colleen had collapsed the floor during a game of hide and seek imposed on them by Mrs. Poots and so Skye had to resort to her second hiding place: the space under the cellar stairs.

It was dusty, spidery, moldy – but at least she knew Nate wasn’t going to come after her there because the air in the basement sent off his asthma. She would crouch with the tape deck she had acquired by more nefarious means from Colleen’s dresser drawer and listen to _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone_ through the headphones, pretending to be Harry in his own cupboard-under-the-stairs.

She didn’t understand at the time that because she was still young and cute, Mrs. Poots and the other staff still viewed her case as slightly hopeful and that’s why they introduced her to Phil at all. If she'd been even a few years older or visibly disabled in any way, they might not have bothered.

Back then, they wanted to change her name to Mary Sue and her records all said Daisy. People usually called her whatever they wanted and it was _grating_ because somewhere in her she knew those names weren't right. None of them.

She heard them speaking above her hiding place. Footsteps. Mrs. Poots was talking about her, using all the usual words Skye had heard said about her: _rambunctious_ , _creative_ , _troubled_ , _spunky_. Phil – she didn't know it was Phil yet, but it's hard for her to conceive of a world were she can't recognize him by even the sound of his steps – was making polite noises of assent.

They reached the last step and Skye slipped the headphones from her head as Phil crouched down beside her.

“Hi,” he said, smiling. His eyes crinkled up with it, like his eyes were smiling on their own they were so happy to see her. “How are you doing?”

She nodded, pressing the foam covering the headphones against her lips. “M'okay.”

“I'm glad,” he said, nodding back. “I'm Phil, by the way. What's your name?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Phil smiles a little broader.

“Well, how about I call you Angel Eyes for now. Is that okay?”

She nodded.

 

Phil's palm is sweating before he even reaches the front door, and while part of that is probably just because it's summer, a lot of it is nerves. He wipes it on his trousers before grasping the cool, metal door handle.

They're repainted the walls (they're cream now), replaced the lockers (standard metallic gray), but the basic layout of the school is the same. There aren't any curves to the hallways – just sharp corners and squared edges. There aren't any windows here apart from those by the doors because none of the walls touch the outside and the ceiling lights give everything a greenish tinge: from the white and maroon linoleum to the scuff marks in the walls and the scratch marks on the lockers. (One locker has _BOBBI SUX DICK_ carved into it and he finds himself frowning, even though no one's watching him.)

But it's empty, like it used to be when he was stuck in summer school. Air conditioners hum. His shoes squeak a little as he walks. The teachers' lounge is at the opposite end of the school from the entrance, tucked away with the rest of the offices. The wall across from the teachers' lounge now has an ugly mural painted on it of children sitting cross-legged and listening raptly as a woman with too long arms reads from a book. Below it says: _Learning is inspiring. Teaching is guiding._

People are talking inside. Laughing. His palm is sweaty. He takes a deep breath through his nose and continues toward Fury's office.

The last time Phil had been in New Lyons, Nick Fury was a fairly new vice principal with an eye patch that prevented any nonsense before it could even begin. When Phil was a senior, he heard that Fury had once worked in the Central Intelligence Agency (simply misinformed) or that he'd been a South American drug lord (racist) or that he was in hiding from fifteen different countries because of a former career as an assassin (melodramatic), but Phil knew better than that.

Fury had joined the Special Forces, which at the time Phil thought was a branch of the military for people with special needs. He was severely injured and sent home after losing an eye and so he'd gone back to school and become a math teacher. And then, sometime later, he was hired at Bragg as the new vice principal.

And then apparently promoted in Phil's absence, which was actually really good. Fury had been a good vice principal and he was the only person in the New Lyons school district with enough balls to argue with the superintendent.

The linoleum in this part of the school is just white and gray, the doors are blue with laminated pages fixed to them with teacher's names. Jasper Sitwell, Janet Van Dyne, Anne Weaver, Billy Koenig, Melinda Q. May...

He swallows and keeps moving.

Fury's sitting behind his desk when Phil enters, glasses on – which has always looked strange with the eyepatch – reading something in a manila folder. He motions to the chair across the desk and Phil sits, feeling very young again. The last time he was in this office was his last year of school. He was skinnier then, more shy... different. His hair was thicker and he was bad at eye contact and could barely talk half the time. Flunking out of most of his classes, except history. The counselor refused to work with him because he was “unruly” and so Fury had become his adviser.

Phil fidgets with his left cuff and waits for Fury to finish reading. Eventually the folder is lowered and Fury removes his glasses.

“Boy, am I glad to see you cleaned yourself up,” he says, looking Phil over. “I'm not gonna lie. The last time I saw you, you did not look this together.”

Phil smiles, more out of politeness than anything because, happy as he is to see Fury, he doesn't like to talk about high school. “I took your advice. Community college. Go out of state.”

“It was good advice,” Fury says, pointing a finger carefully at Phil. His fingertip trembles slightly. After a moment, he lowers his hand. “But I was under the impression you were never coming back here. Or at least that's what you said when you—”

“Everyone says silly things when they're a kid,” Phil says, before Fury can go any further. “And I paid for the damage to school property, if you remember.”

“I sure do,” Fury says. He turns his attention to a stack of folders on his desk and pulls one from the top third. “Well, I'm glad you came back anyway. From what I've heard from my peers up north, you're quite a good history teacher. And you're certified to teach special ed. We need that here.”

Phil smiles, trying to keep his breath even. It's not an interview. He's already been hired and he knows that Fury likes him well enough – enough to contact him specially – but Fury also likes to make people nervous and Phil's never been good at managing anxiety.

“It was my second major,” Phil says. Fury's office is more cluttered than any office should ever be and Phil isn't a tidy person. A few papers slip dangerously close to falling from the shelf behind Fury as he partially swivels his chair, double-checking what Phil can only assume is his CV.

“Well, you'll probably pitch hit a couple classes, though we do have someone that specializes in remedial reading. I'm interested in seeing how you work with this one kid. He's really smart in some subjects and really socially inept. Sort of like you.”

Phil tries to smile, but it ends up closer to a grimace. “I wasn't smart in anything, sir.”

Fury looks at him and drops the folder to the desk. “Did you just call me 'sir'? What is this? The fucking White House?”

Phil grins. “Sorry, boss.”

Fury scoffs and pushes himself laboriously from his chair. “You're going to meet everyone else now, boy,” he says, moving around the desk and slapping Phil on the shoulder. He flinches, but Fury has the good taste not to say anything. “You might even recognize a couple people. God knows they're not gonna recognize you.”

 

She doesn't turn around when they enter the teachers' lounge. Her back is to the door, her shoulder-length hair shining like she's just stepped out of a shampoo commercial. The muscles in her biceps are visible through her shirt as she sits, arms crossed, talking with another brunette, this one with a pixie cut. A couple fingers dangle by Melinda's side – her nails are painted a sort of rusty red color. The one with the pixie looks up when Fury enters and says something Phil can't hear.

And Melinda turns around.

She's aged. He has too. Her face is harder than it used to be, but her posture is more at ease. She used to lead with her head, shoulders slightly hunched, neck muscles tensed. Her back is straight now, her shoulders relaxed. There are more lines in her face than there used to be, showing a history of emotions: concern, delight...

But her skin still shines like silk and her dark eyes still seem to pierce holes through his skull.

He looks away and is suddenly drawn into a ferocious bear hug. A familiar wave of cologne and slightly sour sweat hits Phil's nostrils and a firm hand slaps his back.

Somehow he should've known John Garrett would still be in New Lyons.

 

Leo coasts down the hill to Jemma's house. He's probably going a bit too fast, but the air hitting his face is so soothing. The town is much less crowded than it was in the middle of summer, when the population tripled from tourists and holiday-makers. He doesn't really resent people coming to New Lyons for holidays until he tries to hit up the TCBY's in town and finds a line that's literally going outside the shop itself and on to the sidewalk.

He flexes his hands on the handlebars and slows as he nears the crossroads. One of Jemma's brothers is running with some sort of loud, rattling toy. The sound is already annoying from across the street. The fingers of his right hand tremble a little as he eases across the street, grip tightening so he doesn't bring his hands up to his face by instinct.

“Oy, David! Cut that out!” he shouts as he skids on the gravel driveway. David makes squeaking sound that sort of reminds Leo of the dog toys his mum buys for Capuchin and throws the rattling menace on the ground.

“I'm not David! I'm a tiger!” he insists, stamping tiny feet against the grass. He looks genuinely upset. Leo sighs and knocks his kickstand into place.

“Why aren't you David?” he asks, crouching down to be closer to David's eye line, but far enough to avoid getting hit in the face in case he threw a tantrum. And yes, he did learn from experience.

“Because I'm a tiger!” David shouts, kicking the toy. It makes a horrible sound and Leo presses the side of his head for a moment just to clear his senses.

“Well, why can't you be a tiger named David?”

“David isn't a tiger name! Tigers have fancy names!” David rips up a hunk of grass and throws it over his own head and Leo is very grateful that he matured through childhood. “Like Cheryl!”

Leo blinks. “So. Your name is Cheryl now?”

“Yeah!”

Leo nods because he has apparently given up. “Alright. Cheryl it is then. Is Jemma inside?”

“Yeah!” Cheryl the Tiger wanders over toward the rattling toy.

“Do _not_ touch that,” Leo warns as he walks to the door.

“No!”

“Hey! I – Wait, what are you saying no to?”

“Everything!”

Leo grabs at his own hair in frustration. The issue is he actually likes kids. He especially likes Jemma's little brothers, but he's not as patient as she is and he's too literal by half and they just drive him crazy. “You can't say no to _everything_ , David!”

“My name is Cheryl!”

“God _damn_ it!”

The lock clicks behind him and there's Jemma, her expression disapproving.

“Jemma, Leo just cursed!”

“Oh, you little bastard!” he hisses through gritted teeth. “I will put you in the woods and leave you to the bears!”

“Did you really just threaten a four year old, Leo?” Jemma says, a crease forming between her brows.

Leo finally loosens his grip on his own curls and tries to work out an explanation. “He's insisting he's a tiger!”

She rolls her eyes. “Cheryl, please come inside! Mum needs you.”

Cheryl the Tiger kicks his toy again and Leo squeezes his eyes shut because sound shouldn't itch but that sound _itches at his entire brain Jesus fucking—_

Jemma closes the door behind her brother. For a second her profile is reflected in the elliptical glass panel and she looks like a painting. The outline of her face is softened from the hair on her skin catching the light. Her lips are relaxed, not pressed tight together as they often are. Then she turns her gaze back to him.

“They're all being impossible today,” she sighs, moving past him to the driveway. “And mum's starting her new job next week. It's horrible in there.” She turns back to look at him. She's smiling a little but Leo knows that smaller smiles from Jemma are sometimes just because her mouth curves up naturally at the corners. It's why she always looks so friendly, even when she's angry. She could be angry right now, but he knows Jemma better than that. He's her best friend. She's told him so.

She starts toward the sidewalk, hair swinging about her shoulders. It catches the light, looking like a spoonful of honey over a mug of hot chocolate and he feels a bit like he's in the desert and he's not had a bite to eat in ages, even though he still can taste the Chinese food he had for lunch in his mouth. Her eyes are dark like the shadows in his bedroom – known, mapped, friendly.

“Aren't you coming?” she asks and he jumps.

“Yeah, sorry,” he says and jogs a little to catch up with her.

The neighbors' garden is still a mess, he notes, but they did just move in and they didn't seem grossly incompetent the other day, just a little private. Like, it took him and his mum almost a year to even get any flowers planted. He shouldn't be judging really.

Jemma wraps her arm around his. “This will be okay, right? We shouldn't have texted first? I didn't really think - ”

“Don't worry so much.” He nudges her with his shoulder and she stumbles a little, but she's smiling. “Besides, it beats the under-ten club.”

“Oh God,” Jemma sighs, shutting her eyes as though she's trying to remove a terrible memory from her mind. “They're absolutely killing me. I'm not going to be even near sane by the end of this summer. Correction: Summer's practically over and I'm not sane in the slightest.”

“That sounds more like it.” Leo grins and leads the way up the path to the door. The doorbell is a grungy sort of yellow. It probably was white originally. Pity.

The neighbor whose name Leo has _very suddenly and very completely forgotten_ opens the door and glances between the two of them, looking confused.

“Hi...” she says, sounding uneasy. Leo can smell popcorn inside.

“Hi!” Jemma sings. Leo looks at her. She's doing that face her mum does when she's nervous and trying to be social – big toothy smile, wide eyes, slightly hunched shoulders. “We just thought we'd... say hi...” She glances at Leo, who's becoming more and more aware of the fact that Jemma has decided to do this with absolutely zero game plan.

“We were wondering if you wanted to hang out some time,” Leo says, trying to rescue the situation, “because you don't have any friends. Like – you don't have any friends _here_ , I mean. You probably have friends elsewhere. Um – ”

“Fitz!” Jemma hisses and Leo clamps his jaw shut before he can continue to sound like an idiot.

The neighbor stares at them, her mouth half-open. She's got very pretty lips. A little thinner and paler than Jemma's, but still pretty. He's not some weird non-sexual ghost-thing-or-whatever like everyone seems to think he is. He notices girls. People. (He's not going to lie. He notices a lot of boys too. He's not about to scream it from the rooftops or anything, but... yeah.) But a lot of people don't realize it because he basically never realizes it himself until there's a really pretty person in front of him and it's just – _there_ , all at once.

But now he's sort of worried that the neighbor is going to tell them to just go fuck themselves, but she suddenly smiles and he's momentarily stunned by how her face seems to shine with it.

“This is the best conversation _ever_ ,” she says, beaming at them. She shakes her head to recover herself, but her eyebrows are still raised. “So, like, you want to hang out with me?” She looks between the two of them. “Because, like, I just found a torrent of old _Project Runway_ seasons, but you're totally welcome to join me.”

“Oh!” Jemma smiles, looking vaguely relieved. Her shoulders relax a little. “Thank you so much! But, I mean, if you want to be alone, we absolutely understand, I mean – ”

“Oh no!” The neighbor waves Jemma's words from the air. Her hair has been pulled back in a loose ponytail, but Leo's pretty sure she has the straightest hair he's ever seen. (His standards might not be the best, though, as he and his mum can occasionally look like human-sheep hybrids.) “I'm just waiting for my dad to get home. He's just going through job training and he said it's gonna take forever, so...” She shrugs and steps back from the door, gesturing for them to enter. “Come on!”

The first room is entirely empty, which makes him feel like he's playing _Silent Hill_ at Jemma's birthday again. The wood floors aren't in the best condition, still scratched from the carpet the last neighbors had and bearing signs of dirt having been tracked in and out during moving. The neighbor heads straight back toward the living room, without breaking her stride. She's wearing shorts that show off just how long and tan and muscular her legs are and Leo has to force himself to look away before his shorts get tight.

The living room contains a half-broken down couch which Leo can't imagine being less than ten years old and an armchair that's somehow _older_. A flat-screen TV sits on top of a slightly tilted IKEA shelf. The lower portions contain a PS4 and an impressive film and game collection that's also taking up a lot of the floor around the shelf in neat little stacks. There's a set of shelves that look like the sort sold at Wal-Mart that's stocked with various books, a glass-topped coffee table and a rag rug that covers a lot of the floor in front of the couch. A couple slips of paper that show different paint colors have been tacked to the wall – mostly orangey-reds or warm yellows. An old, framed recruitment poster from World War Two (Leo thinks) is propped in the corner.

The neighbor drops down on the couch and Leo notices a cord connecting her laptop to the flat-screen. She grabs the remote and turns on the television itself. Her desktop background is a picture of an American flag with a bald eagle super-imposed over it.

“And... _voila_!” she says, selecting a file. “Sit! Sit! Come on!”

Leo moves to the armchair and slowly lowers himself into the seat. “I know this show. My mum watches it a lot.”

“My dad hates it,” the neighbor says, setting her laptop on the coffee table and grabbing a handful of popcorn from the bowl. “Help yourselves, by the way.” She hums appreciatively as she chews. “Mmm... Butter...”

Jemma folds her legs beneath her as she sits beside the neighbor, careful not to let their legs brush. “So Skye, I saw that Ward delivered your pizza last night...” Leo looks at Jemma, but she's focused on _Skye her name is Skye_. “Like. I wasn't spying. I just heard his car. Ward's car, I mean – ”

“Jemma,” Leo says, before she can continue. She looks at him, her cheeks a little red. He rolls his eyes. So this is the ulterior motive. She knows Leo knows things about Grant Ward, because he was already living in town when Grant moved there, and she knows there's a lot Leo won't talk about with Grant, just because... well...

So there's really not a lot of consensus on Grant Ward at Bragg High School, or in New Lyons in general.

As Leo remembers, Grant showed up in town at age thirteen, a little chubby with close-cropped hair and a sullen demeanor. John Garrett, a “good old home boy” by everyone-besides-Fitz's estimation, apparently took him in. Grant had been in some foster home in Massachusetts before, if gossip and a slightly drunken Mack were to be believed. He was quiet and strange when he moved to New Lyons and had a habit of getting in bad fights, which made sense really because he was a full year older than the rest of the class. Leo guesses he was held back at some point. He's heard that that happens with kids that move around a lot.

Anyway, the day summer vacation started, John sent him off with the boy scouts and he wasn't seen around town until the next school year.

His hair had grown out a bit, he'd lost some weight and had grown about three inches and suddenly looked much more...

It's not that he looked bad at all before. There was just something distinctly feral about him, like a caged rodent. He sat at the back of classrooms and fought during recess like a wild animal. He bit a teacher during one memorable afternoon. He wore oversized clothing that made him look twice his size: a short, pudgy boy with a shaved head, blotchy cheeks and darting eyes.

But after that summer, he looked like a picture from a _Hardy Boys_ book, with lots of thick, black hair, a big smile and a tan. He played on the football team that year, but switched to American football when they entered high school. By the end of eighth grade, he was already six feet tall and his shoulders had broadened and he looked like a man already.

Meanwhile, Leo still looks like a fucking eight year old, but that's not important.

And a lot of people love Grant now because he's good at sports and he's the sort of student teachers like. The sort with the homework done but not too many questions (not the sort to “waste time”, like Leo's always being accused of) and he's handsome to boot.

But –

He bites his tongue and narrows his eyes at Jemma, but she just looks back at Skye, who sits there, confused for a moment. “Ward? Oh yeah! Hot pizza guy!”

Jemma laughs a little too loudly. “I doubt he'd like to be called that...”

Skye shrugs. “Whatever. Like, he's not here. Also he's cute, so... Like... Anyway. What about him?”

“I was just wondering,” Jemma says, smiling a little too broadly. (Leo doesn't understand why she's so nervous around people. They're just people. If they're going to be shitheads, it's not like anything she does is going to change that.) “He and Fitz are actually good friends.”

He wrinkles his nose as Skye goes, “Oh, really?” He wouldn’t really call Grant Ward a friend, mostly because he’s fairly certain that Grant Ward doesn’t really have friends like Leo, who have to be “coddled”, as his dad would say. Most people don’t have patience for Leo, who's generally too loud and too picky. Mack and Jemma are the only people who can stand being around him for extended periods on their own. Everyone else just… stops talking to him.

But, as his mum likes to point out, most of the people who do that are either (a) ableist fucks who can’t be bothered to deal with someone who’s neurodivergent or (b) ignorant that some people are neurodivergent and, thus, have a good, hard slap coming for them (the potentially ableist fucks, he means, not the neurodivergent people).

And, honestly, Leo isn’t sure which one Ward is. It doesn’t help that he’s generally distant with everyone. In fact, Leo isn’t sure anyone is really Ward’s friend. He treats everyone in the same removed but polite way. And Leo isn’t really interested in being friends with guys like Ward. Okay. That's kind of a lie. Correction: Leo just feels generally uncomfortable with guys. Mack is a big exception and Leo doesn’t mind hanging around with him when Mack invites over some of the other guys he knows, but they’re all varying degrees of macho and Leo isn’t macho by anyone’s estimation, much less someone like Ward.

Guys always have so much to prove, it seems, and they do it a lot by stepping on guys like Leo, who are little and different. He sort of prefers hanging out with girls, because it's like... It becomes almost infectious, wanting to show everyone how manly he is and when he's with girls, he doesn’t have anything to prove. Girls don’t seem to question guys’ macho-ness a lot, Leo finds, or if they do, it’s not when he’s around and he can't help that. Girls also don’t start doing that thing where they all look at each other when he starts talking about stuff like _Star Trek_ or his mum or his dog, Capuchin.

“Well...” he starts and leans forward to grab some popcorn, tossing it back before continuing. It's dry and so buttery it feels like his mouth's just been coated in grease. He rubs his tongue against his hard palate, trying to get rid of the texture. His mum hates this sort of food. “We're not exactly _good friends_. We've got a lot of mutual friends.”

“Fitz has a lot of really handsome friends who he won’t introduce me to,” Jemma says, looking oddly excited by this. Leo rolls his eyes.

“That’s because you freak out around guys you think are good looking! Remember that time you got partnered with, um… Oh shit… What’s his name?” He looks at Jemma for help and she squints at him before looking annoyed.

“Mike Peterson is a total anomaly!” Jemma’s voice is getting all squeaky, the way it does when she’s getting upset. Her cheeks are all flushed. “And you think he’s handsome too – I know you do!”

And that hurts. A lot. Because Leo would never, _ever_ do that to Jemma, because she was in actual tears when she told him about her own confusion with all things sexual but especially the _defined sexuality_ bits, because Jemma gets flustered around boys, but she can get even worse with pretty girls. And Jemma knows that Leo’s got similar issues and it’s not like either of them needs anything else to be teased about.

Her eyes go a bit wide as she realizes what she’s just said. Skye laughs and Leo’s ears burn. “I don’t think he’s _handsome_ , Jemma. I – fucking – I think he’s _strong_ and – and _manly_ , okay? There’s a difference!” He feels like his chest is going to burst because Skye is laughing harder now and Jemma’s giggling. He’s going to _fucking murder something_. He shuts his eyes to find the words and tugs at his hair, his palms vibrating a little against his scalp. “No – okay, just – _ugh_ , stop it, the pair of you!”

“Oh, alright – _alright_ , Fitz! Calm down,” Jemma says. He opens one eye to see her giving him that one look that says she’s _going to work things out just wait a moment_. His grip tenses on his hair, pulling his scalp up from his skull. Jemma turns to Skye and says, in a voice that’s a little too bright to be her own, “Alright. All Fitz actually said was that Mike is very – muscular. Which, I mean, honestly, he really is…” She bites her lip, her eyes a bit glassy.

Skye nods slowly. “So it’s like he – ” she gestures to Leo, “ – was calling this guy handsome _by omission_ and you – ” she gestures to Jemma, “ – were maybe projecting a little bit?”

Jemma nods a bit too quickly. “Absolutely! Yes!”

Leo pulls at one of his curls, letting his left hand fall back to his thigh. He’s going to murder Jemma.

 

They wind up, over the course of two hours, finishing off about two-thirds of the popcorn in the house and somehow they’ve gotten on the topic of ESP, which is, like, one of Skye’s favorite things to talk about. Fitz – who’s sitting at the edge of his seat, lower lip trapped between his teeth, his hands clasped between his knees – is in emphatic support of the idea. Jemma the Teenage Vampire, not so much.

“It just doesn’t make any sense for someone to have ESP. There’s literally nothing in the human body which would allow for such.”

“But what if someone had a really superb sense of _smell_?” Fitz says, leaning further forward, enough that Skye’s starting to worry that he’s going to fall off the chair. His curls vibrate in excitement, as does the collar of his plaid, my-mom-bought-it-for-me-at-Target, short-sleeved button up. “Like dogs do, you know? Where they can smell, like, when people are sad and sh – stuff,” he corrects, awkwardly, which Skye finds weird because he’s said “fuck” about twenty times before this. “Wouldn’t that be a way that people could read minds?”

“Fitz, might I remind you that human beings and dogs are _different species_?”

“We’re not talking hard and fast science here, though,” Skye cuts in. Her hands are up by her face and she’s not totally sure when they got there, but she’s _using them_. “We’re talking pure hypotheticals. Could you breed people until they had that kind of sense of smell?”

“No,” Jemma says, firmly, hands in her lap. She’s one of those girls who looks somehow disheveled, even when they're just sitting still – stray hairs sticking out like a halo, the ends always a little staticky. Her lips are pursed in annoyance right now and Skye feels like she prefers Jemma annoyed and ready to fight than when she was all smiles, standing awkwardly behind her even smiley-er mother. Her cheeks are flushed now; her eyes bright with something hilariously close to rage. “It would be literally impossible to _breed people_ to smell like hunting dogs. Now, _why_ are we talking about _breeding people_?”

Skye's mouth falls open, her mind strangely blank. “Yeah, that was kind of fucked up.”

“No!” Fitz says, shaking his head so rapidly he momentarily becomes like a little blur. “No, it's not. Jemma's pretending to be offended so she can win an argument.” He glares at Jemma, pale eyes narrowed.

Jemma gives a wounded gasp and shifts forward on the couch. Skye shouldn't feel this overjoyed at being in the middle of an argument, but... yeah. It's happening. This is even better than _Bridalplasty_. “Oh, am I, _Doctor Mengele_?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Why is always zero to Doctor fucking Mengele with you?”

“Um, maybe because I'm Jewish, Fitz!”

“So am I!”

“Oh, me too!” Skye says, not really thinking. It's weird. Or not that weird. Whatever. She's had kind of a lonely summer: mornings and afternoons at the library or in her room, evenings with Phil on the couch after he got back from teaching summer school. It's nice hanging around her peers again and it's... it's nice knowing that she's not going to be walking into Bragg next week alone.

Both of them turn to look at her, tension suddenly dissolved.

“Oh thank God!” Jemma says, a hand pressed to her heart. “There are practically no Jews here. Major minority!”

“Well, the Bakshis are Hindu,” Fitz cuts in. “And... oh God, there's another one...” He rubs his hands over his face.

“No, but I mean, we've got nothing on the WASPs in this town!”

“That's fair.”

Jemma beams at her. Apparently the argument is totally over. “We're just really glad you're here. We can introduce you to some of the congregation if you'd like.”

“Oh, um, thanks,” Skye says, smiling awkwardly. “I've never seen anyone this excited about Judaism before, not gonna lie.”

“She's not joking about the WASPs,” Fitz says. He's now rubbing his neck, half hunched over. At least he's not sitting on the edge of the sofa anymore. “There are so many of them. It's like a new plague.” Jemma laughs loudly and presses a hand over her mouth.

“Okay, they can't be like a plague.” Skye's old school had a lot of gentiles and, yeah, okay, they were annoying, but it wasn't –

“No,” Fitz says. He sits up and looks her dead in the eye. Growing up with Phil, who vacillates between being terrible and excellent at eye contact, has made Skye really bad with it and she struggles to not look away. “They can be. They absolutely can be a plague.”

Jemma nods. Skye's heard a lot about small town bullshit – about small-to-large scale white supremacy, about weird cliquish behavior between even different Protestant Christian denominations. And it sucks because she really, really likes living in a place that actually has, like, grass and she was really sure it wouldn't be that bad; that those cliches must've come from Lifetime Channel Original Movies.

She sighs through her nose and leans back on the sofa. “Shit.”

 

There's a modest-sized house, about four blocks from Bragg's. It's largely under-decorated – no lawn furniture or plants growing in the flowerbeds. Just grass: bright green and neatly mowed. The garage bears newer paint than the rest of the house. It's all bright white, unfaded and unpeeled, and the rest of the house is still a sort of discolored yellow. The screen door is rusted, staining the painted frame where it touches the metal.

A dog sits in a large, caged area of the front yard, tongue hanging out from the suffocating heat. Its fur is short, shiny and black. A purebred lab. Its paws are folded under its head. It's too tired, too hot to be active. It just lies there, wheezing from the heat.

The fencing around the yard is new: a summer's worth of sweat and hard work and a broken thumb that's not going to heal straight.

(John tended Grant's blisters and cuts over the kitchen table in the evenings, smiles playing around the corners of his lips.)

There are two cars in the driveway. One is newer – smoother lines and metallic paint and a scuff-free bumper. The other is about ten years old: a white Altima with a couple choice bumper stickers, including one for the local Pizza Hut.

 

Phil comes home at around five thirty that evening, his face flushed and his collar undone. His hair is rumpled like he's been running his fingers through it.

Skye sits up on the couch where she's been stretched out since Fitz and Jemma left an hour before to either babysit or steal a dog – she's not totally sure which – and looks at Phil in the doorway. His shoulders are half-slumped, like he's somehow defeated, and the worry-lines in his forehead are worse than ever.

“Hey! How did it go?” she asks, trying to keep her voice light, even as Phil flops down in the armchair. He furrows his brow and looks at her before sighing deeply.

“I don't really know,” Phil says, pressing his lips together. “It was really strange.”

“Strange how?” Skye asks, closing her laptop and moving it to the coffee table.

“Well, I already knew several of the people there from high school – ”

Skye sucks in a breath through her teeth. She may not be an expert of Phil's high school days, but she knows enough to understand that Phil being recognized as the same person he'd been in high school would be a horrible thing. “Shit.”

Phil continues, his gaze now focused somewhere in the middle distance. “ – and one of them congratulated me on 'beating autism'.” He looks at her again, face contorted with confusion. “How do you 'beat autism'? That's not even... I don't...”

“Did they really say that? Jesus Christ – ”

“ _Superstar_ ,” Phil finishes and rubs his eyes. “I just... I know it was my idea to move here, but I sort of thought it might have changed a little.”

“That sucks.” Skye shifts towards him and rests a hand on his arm – his left, but above where the prosthetic attaches. He smiles at her, a little distantly.

“It's not gonna be that bad,” he says. “Not for you – for either of us. It was just a long day.”

“Who said that even?” Skye rolls onto her stomach so she can kick her feet up behind her, like a girl in some romance comic. “Come on! I wanna hear shit-talking!”

Phil rolls his eyes. “John Garrett,” he says, mouth twisted to one side. “He's not a bad guy or anything – or I don't remember him being one. He's just stupid sometimes. A lot of the time.” He shrugs. “And there was also the old vice principal who's now the principal and there was a... a former friend of mine.” He grimaces at her. “Not the best day.”

“Tell me about this former friend,” Skye reaches forward to poke his arm and he shrugs awkwardly.

“There's not much to tell. We graduated, she joined the military, I went to college. We fell out of touch.” He smiles at her. “That's all.”

“ _She_.” Skye narrows her eyes. “That's not all.”

He mirrors her suspicious expression, still smiling. “That's all I'm telling you,” he says and pushes himself out of the armchair, a little awkwardly. “What d'you say for dinner tonight, eh? What can we get for take out?”

She briefly considers bugging him for more information, but decides to wait another day.

“ _You grew up here_ ,” she says, palms raised towards him, trying to mime her aggravation with his stupid-ass question. “ _You_ are the one who would know this!”

Phil smacks his own forehead and looks at her, eyes wide. “Of course! Because all the restaurants would be exactly the same as they were _thirty years ago_!”

She rolls her eyes. “And you're always trying to say you're not old.”

“I'm not old. Get up. We're getting McDonald's.”

 

The McDonald's flies a Union Jack. Skye isn't sure what to make of that.

They sit together once they get home and spread out their feast on the kitchen table. The tree outside the window rustles in the night breeze as Skye steals one of Phil's fries. He glares at her.

“You sneak.”

She grins and bites off part of the fry. “Hey Phil, I have a question.”

“Shoot,” he says, words slightly muffled by the bite of quarter pounder in his mouth. He's taken out his contacts already and, if his hair were a little thicker and a little darker – and if his nose were less crooked and his left hand less obviously made of plastic – Skye would say he looked like Clark Kent at the end of a long day. As is, his hair is mousy and thinning and he looks tired but happy. He always looks a bit like that – worn out, but pleased to be around. She knows he struggled with depression in the past – comorbid depression and autism, a gift in the mid-late twentieth century – but, by his own admission, has been able to handle it. She's seen him when he's depressed. Glimpsed is a better word – because Phil is private with his emotions and likes to hide them behind cheerful posturing.

“Is this town full of WASPs?”

He stares at her for a moment before laughing. She sits there, awkwardly, waiting for him to stop, but he's caught up in it, choking a little on his burger as he gasps for air.

“WASPs? Like, gentile-WASPs? Not insects.” She nods even though his eyes still a bit teary. His cheeks are flushed red. “I guess so. As much as everywhere else. Why?”

“Oh, I was just hanging out today with the girl next door and one of her friends. They said there are a lot of WASPs here.”

Phil laughs. “Oh, are they not WASPs next door?”

“Nah, I guess they're Jewish too.”

“Oh... Well, that's nice.”

Skye purses her lips. “Jemma might be excited about introducing us to everyone at services.”

Phil puts down his burger and looks at her. “You're grounded.”

“Yeah, right.”

 

 _It's over ninety-five degrees outside and at least ten degrees hotter in the packed auditorium._ Farewell, Class of '80! _says the banner hanging over the stage. It ripples a little from the fan that's running like a jet engine to little effect behind the blackout curtain. The air indoors is thick enough that it feels like soup, though just outside the windows there's a neat summer breeze blowing, just enough to bring the smallest relief._

_May is called up before Phil: the Bragg tradition of handing out the girls' diplomas before the boys out of misplaced chivalry. She's wearing white pumps with her maroon cap and gown. Phil doesn't know what dress she's wearing beneath. Probably the pearly-gray one her mom always insists on for “educational events”._

_She doesn't look at him as she walks past, chin held high. Her curls bounce around her shoulders. Blue eyeshadow glitters on her eyelids._

_She doesn't look at him. He doesn't look at her either. There's some dust on the toe of his dress shoes and he bends over to wipe it off with his fingertips. His glasses slip a little down his nose._

_He's going to leave this fucking shit hole of a school._

_Andy's the first of the boys to be called – “Andrew Alcott” – and he walks across the stage, faded jeans visible under his blue graduation gown. Phil's pretty sure he's wearing a t-shirt as well. Like it's nothing. Like it's just another day._

_Andy's ungrateful and spoiled and stupid and mean, but he's likeable, so he's graduating with a three-point-oh and an invitation to one last big party at head cheerleader, Jenny Halliday's, house._

_Phil will get his diploma with a two-point-three and he's been working_ so fucking hard _for it, because he can't fucking stay in this town._

_He's gonna leave New Lyons. He's gonna leave Bragg. He's gonna leave New Lyons._

“ _Phillip Cowl-son.”_

_He squeezes his eyes shut as Principal Pierce butchers his name and stands up. He climbs the steps to the stage, stumbling a little on the last one._

_Melinda isn't watching him from her seat. She's ducked her head, her shoulders slumped._

_He heard she had signed up for the army. He hopes she goes overseas, because there's something so wrong about seeing her right there in the auditorium, in New Lyons, and her not –_

_Principal Pierce smiles his gleaming smile at Phil and takes his hand to shake. “Great job, Phillip.”_

“ _My name's said 'Coulson',” Phil says, because his cheeks are burning and the lights are too fucking bright. He can't look at Pierce's face._

“ _I can't hear you, son,” Pierce says. “Congratulations on graduating. I didn't think I'd see the day.”_

_He presses the rolled up diploma into his hand. Phil unrolls it without thinking. They've spelled his name with one 'L'. 'Philip'. Pierce coughs loudly and Phil looks back at him. Pierce's smile is brittle now._

“ _Get off the fucking stage, alright?”_

“ _You misspelled my name,” he says. The words bounce off the back end of the auditorium, picked up and carried by the microphone. The crowd of parents and students who all don't give a shit make a collective sound. At first he thinks it's angry._

_But it's laughter. He turns to look at the assembly, but he just gets blinded by one of the stage lamps._

“ _Get_ off the stage _, Phillip,” Pierce hisses through gritted teeth. The paper crumples in Phil's hands without him meaning it to. He presses his left palm to his temple._

“ _Hey.” He turns to see the vice principal, the tall, vaguely terrifying Nicholas Fury standing behind him. He places a gentle hand on Phil's shoulder. “Come on, Phillip,” he says, softly, and steers him across the stage. The other students are talking to each other. He can hear a few people still laughing. Even when he's sitting in his original seat and another student is walking across in his blue cap and gown, he can hear Andy's high pitched laugh._

_He rips the paper in two. It's an accident, but he never really bothers to get a second copy._

_Philip J. Cowl-son, graduate of Bragg fucking High School._

_Melinda still has her head down._


End file.
